eZ Components - Mail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.. contents:: Table of Contents
Introduction
============
The Mail component provides functionality to send, retrieve and parse
mail messages. If you require an easy way to send a mail, use the ezcMailComposer
class, which allows you to send HTML mails with images, attachments and an
optional text part. If you require more advanced mail messages, you can build the
complete message yourself using the ezcMailPart derived classes. You can retrieve
mail messages from different sources using the supported transports.
Class overview
==============
This section gives you an overview of the main classes in the Mail
component.
ezcMailComposer
This is a convenience class that allows you to send plain text or
HTML messages with attachments, without having to construct the parts of
the message yourself. Most users will use this class.
ezcMail
If ezcMailComposer does not have the functionality you require, you can use
the ezcMail class to build MIME-structured mail from scratch. This requires
basic knowledge about how a mail is structured.
ezcMailAddress
This small class represents a mail address with an optional name. It is used
by both ezcMailComposer and ezcMail to set recipient addresses.
ezcMailParser
This class parses mail messages from text into ezcMail structures. You can
use it together with the mail retrieval transport classes.
ezcMailSmtpTransport
Sends mails using an SMTP server. After sending a mail, the connection can be
kept alive so that the next mail sent uses the same connection, speeding up
the process.
ezcMailMtaTransport
Sends mails using the PHP mail() function.
ezcMailPop3Transport
Connects to a POP3 server and allows the fetching and deleting of mails.
ezcMailImapTransport
Connects to an IMAP server and allows operations on mails in a mailbox
(fetch, delete) and operations on mailboxes (create, delete, rename, append).
Usage
=====
Transport protocols
-------------------
The Mail component provides transport protocols for both sending and retrieving
mail.
For sending mail, the following protocols are supported:
- SMTP (ezcMailSmtpTransport) - uses an SMTP server to send mail. Supports
plain and TLS/SSL/SSLv2/SSLv3 connections.
- MTA (ezcMailMtaTransport) - wraps around the PHP mail() function.
For mail retrieval we currently support the following protocols:
- POP3 (ezcMailPop3Transport) - an old protocol but still used. SSL is supported.
- IMAP (ezcMailImapTransport) - handles multiple mailboxes. SSL is supported.
- MBOX (ezcMailMboxTransport) - handles Unix mailbox file formats.
Mail retrieval from other sources include:
- File (ezcMailFileSet) - handles mails stored in files.
- Variable (ezcMailVariableSet) - handles mails stored in memory.
Mail parsers
------------
After using a mail retrieval transport to fetch a set of mails, a mail parser
can be used to go through the set and extract the needed information like
subject, sender, date and attachments from each mail in the set. The ezcMailParser
class is used for this purpose.
Mail parts
----------
The ezcMail component supports a wide variety of mail parts that can be used
when sending or retrieving mails:
- ezcMailFile - mail attachment from an existing file
- ezcMailStreamFile - mail attachment from an open stream
- ezcMailVirtualFile - mail attachment from a string in memory
- ezcMailMultipartAlternative - used to bundle a group of mail parts where only one should be shown
- ezcMailMultipartDigest - used to bundle a list of mail objects
- ezcMailMultipartMixed - used to bundle an ordered list of mail parts
- ezcMailMultipartRelated - intended for mail parts consisting of several inter-related body parts
- ezcMailMultipartReport - used for sending delivery status notifications
- ezcMailDeliveryStatus - used for sending delivery status notifications
- ezcMailRfc822Digest - used to insert another mail into a mail
- ezcMailText - used for plain text
Mail tools
----------
In the ezcMailTools class, you will find various useful static methods that can be
used in your applications:
- ezcMailTools::lineBreak() - returns one end-of-line character (default \\r\\n). Use ezcMailTools::setLineBreak() to change the default
- ezcMailTools::composeEmailAddress() - returns the RFC822 representation of a mail address as a string. Use ezcMailTools::composeEmailAddresses() for an array of mail address objects
- ezcMailTools::parseEmailAddress() - returns an ezcMailAddress object from a string mail address. Use ezcMailTools::parseEmailAddresses() for a string of mail addresses
- ezcMailTools::generateMessageId() - returns a unique message ID to be used for a mail message
- ezcMailTools::generateContentId() - returns a unique ID to be used for Content-ID headers
- ezcMailTools::mimeDecode() - decodes MIME-encoded fields and tries to recover from errors
- ezcMailTools::replyToMail() - returns a new ezcMail object that is a reply to the specified ezcMail object
See the ezcMailTools example below for information on how to use these methods.
Building and sending mail
=========================
eZ components provides two ways to create mail. The simplest is to use the
composer class ezcMailComposer. Using the composer you can send plain text
messages, HTML messages with images and messages with attachments.
If you require more advanced messages you can also customize them entirely by
building it from the scratch using the various part types in ezcMail. The part
types are structured the same way as the underlying mail MIME types.
Sending a mail with the composer
--------------------------------
Sending a mail using the composer is very straightforward. This small example
displays how to send a normal text message.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_composer.php
:literal:
Sending a mail with HTML, inline images and attachments
-------------------------------------------------------
This example shows how to send a mail with HTML text, images and attachments
using the ezcMailComposer class.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_composer_attachments.php
:literal:
The mime-type of the attachment can be specified if needed. See the
documentation for the functions addFileAttachment() and addStringAttachment()
for more details.
Securing HTML mails which include file:// in image tags
-------------------------------------------------------
By default, if the htmlText property contains an HTML image tag with file://
in href, that file will be included in the created message.
Example::
<img src="file:///home/me/image.jpg" />
This can be a security risk if a user links to another file, for example logs
or password files. With the automaticImageInclude option (default value true)
from ezcMailComposerOptions, the automatic inclusion of files can be turned
off.
Example::
$options = new ezcMailComposerOptions();
$options->automaticImageInclude = false; // default value is true
$mail = new ezcMailComposer( $options );
// ... add To, From, Subject, etc to $mail
$mail->htmlText = "<html>Here is the image: <img src="file:///etc/passwd" /></html>";
// ... send $mail
After running the above code, the sent mail will not contain the file specified
in the htmlText property.
Building a mail from scratch
----------------------------
The class structure of the Mail component follows that of the mail MIME. This
means that you can build advanced MIME messages part by part.
The first example displays how to build a similar message to the one above.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_mail_simple.php
:literal:
As you can see, there is not much difference compared to the composer version.
In the next example we will add an attachment to our manually built mail:
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_mail_attachments.php
:literal:
By default the generated message will contain a text which is displayed by
e-mail clients lacking MIME-support::
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
This text can be changed or removed by setting the property *noMimeMessage* on
the multipart, before generating the mail or sending it. Example::
$part = new ezcMailMultipartMixed( $textPart, $fileAttachment );
$part->noMimeMessage = 'Your e-mail client does not understand MIME.';
$mail = new ezcMail();
$mail->body = $part;
Building MIME structures that work
----------------------------------
When you build mail mail from scratch most combinations of MailParts will
produce valid messages. Unfortunately, even though a message is valid
structurally that does not mean that all mail clients will display it
properly. This section gives a few hints on what to do and what not to do.
1. Ommit Multipart/Mixed parts with only one part. Some mail clients like
Mozilla Thunderbird do not display these correctly. Of course, they are not
necessary either.
2. Mail with alternative text/HTML parts and common attachments can be
implemented in many ways. However, we have only found one structure that
seems to work across all clients:
MultipartMixed( MultipartAlternative( TextPart, TextPart ), FilePart, ... )
Sending a mail using SMTP
-------------------------
This example shows how to send a mail with SMTP, by using an SSLv3
connection:
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_smtp_ssl.php
:literal:
Using stronger authentication methods with the SMTP transports
--------------------------------------------------------------
The SMTP transports supports various authentication methods: DIGEST-MD5,
CRAM-MD5, NTLM, LOGIN, PLAIN. Not all methods are supported by all servers, and
some servers don't support authentication at all. NTLM authentication requires
the mcrypt PHP extension.
By default, the SMTP transport tries to login anonymously to the SMTP server
(if an empty username and password have been provided), or to authenticate with
the strongest method supported by the server (if username and password have
been provided). The preferred authentication method can be changed with the
option preferredAuthMethod. See the ezcMailSmtpTransport class for a list of
supported authentication methods.
If the preferred method is specified via options, only that authentication
method will be attempted on the SMTP server. If it fails, an exception will be
thrown.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_smtp_auth.php
:literal:
Avoid Bcc headers appearing in the sent mails
---------------------------------------------
By default the Mail component leaves it to the SMTP server to strip the Bcc
header from the sent mails. Some SMTP servers will not strip the Bcc header. If
you want to be sure that the Bcc header will not appear in sent mails, use
the stripBccHeader option from ezcMailOptions::
$options = new ezcMailOptions();
$options->stripBccHeader = true; // default is false
$mail = new ezcMail( $options );
Character encoding
------------------
Most of the world does not speak and write US ASCII and thus requires more
advanced character encoding to display mail correctly.
The following example shows how to send a mail with the body and subject
encoded with iso-8859-1 and a custom header encoded with iso-8859-1:
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_charset.php
:literal:
You can of course choose and combine any available character sets. Make sure
that the input text is encoded as specified, or you may get unexpected
results.
Extending the Mail component
----------------------------
It is possible to extend the Mail component if you require part types that are
not supported by default. The following two examples shows how you can
implement support for digest mail messages as attachments to your mail. This
functionality is available through the ezcMailRfc822Digest class. For
the sake of this example, we will recreate it in the MailRFC822Digest class.
The mail system already supports sending attachments through the
ezcMailMultipartMixed type. Unfortunately directly inserting an ezcMail object
as a part does not work. This is because mail digests are a special case: they
require two extra headers that are separated by the normal mail headers.
To make it work, we create the class RFC822Digest to add these headers:
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_extend_create.php
:literal:
Our new class extends the ezcMailPart class. This is required for all parts of
a mail. ezcMailPart provides two important methods that we can override:
ezcMailPart::generateHeaders() and ezcMailPart::generateBody(). These two
methods are called in succession by the parent part and should return the
headers and the body text of the part.
We do not need to override generateHeaders() since we can simply set the headers
we want directly on the object. We do need to override generateBody(),
since we want to include the full text of the mail digest.
The new class can be used directly when building a mail. The example assumes
that a valid ezcMail object is available in the $digest variable.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_extend_use.php
:literal:
Using the ezcMailTools class
----------------------------
In this example, we use the various methods from the ezcMailTools class.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_tools.php
:literal:
Mail retrieval and parsing
==========================
Many applications need to interact with a message store. The Mail
component makes this easy through the class ezcMailParser and the mail
retrieval transport classes. Mail is fetched, parsed and returned to you in the
same structure that is used to send mail.
The Mail component currently allows you to fetch and parse mail messages from
POP3, IMAP, mbox files, single mail files and from variables. The parser fully
supports mail in all character sets, multipart mail (attachments), HTML mail,
HTML mail with images and digest messages.
Retrieving mail using POP3
--------------------------
The following example shows how to fetch messages from a POP3 account using
various methods and to parse the messages for use.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_pop3.php
:literal:
The parser returns an array of ezcMail messages with parts organized according
to the MIME structure of the mail.
Retrieving mail using IMAP
--------------------------
The following example shows how to fetch messages from an IMAP account using
various functions and to parse the messages for use.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_imap.php
:literal:
The parser returns an array of ezcMail messages with parts organized according
to the MIME structure of the mail.
Additional usage of the IMAP transport
--------------------------------------
The IMAP transport supports multiple mailboxes. In the following example, we
work with mailboxes and flags.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_imap_extra.php
:literal:
Refering messages by their unique IDs in IMAP
---------------------------------------------
With IMAP it is possible to refer to messages using their unique IDs, which
usually never change, unlike message numbers. Unfortunately this is not
possible yet in POP3.
The next example shows how to enable refering to messages by their unique IDs.
To see the list of the methods which support unique IDs referencing, consult
the documentation for the ezcMailImapTransport class.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_imap_uids.php
:literal:
Working with transport options
------------------------------
The POP3, IMAP and SMTP transports allow options to be specified when calling
the transport constructors. These options are implemented in the classes
ezcMailPop3TransportOptions, ezcMailImapTransportOptions and
ezcMailSmtpTransportOptions. In the following example, we
specify options when calling the POP3 transport constructor.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_pop3_options.php
:literal:
Using SSL with POP3 and IMAP
----------------------------
The POP3 and IMAP transports allow SSL connections (if the mail server supports
them). In the following example, we connect to an IMAP server
using an SSL connection.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_imap_ssl.php
:literal:
Retrieving mail from mbox files
-------------------------------
The following example shows how to fetch all messages from an mbox file and
to parse the messages for use.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_mbox.php
:literal:
The parser returns an array of ezcMail messages with parts organized according
to the MIME structure of the mail.
Parsing a message set
---------------------
The following example shows how to parse a message set retrieved from an IMAP
or POP3 account, an mbox file, a single mail file or a variable.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_parse.php
:literal:
Because the parser will delete the temporary attachments after the script ends,
it is needed to save those files to another directory. On lines 19-26 a way of
how to do this is shown. The *contentDisposition->displayFileName* property of
$part was used, as the *fileName* property of $part contains the raw file name
from the mail.
For a more detailed example on how to use a mail object, please see the
`display example`_.
.. _display example: Mail_display-example.html
For an example on how to display a listing of mails, please see the
`mail listing example`_.
.. _mail listing example: Mail_mail-listing-example.html
For a list of supported mail-related RFCs, please see the `RFCs list`_.
.. _RFCs list: Mail_rfcs.html
Displaying HTML mail with inline images
---------------------------------------
In order to display HTML mail with inline images, you need to make sure that
the attached images are accessible by the web server. Besides this, you also
need to replace the internal mail references to the images with references to
the file in the document root. In the following example we use
ezcMailTools::replaceContentIdRefs() to do exactly this.
.. include:: tutorial/tutorial_html_display.php
:literal:
Using a custom mail class
-------------------------
When parsing a mail, an object of class ezcMail is created by default. You can
change this by specifying a custom mail class to the parser before parsing. The
custom mail class must extend ezcMail.
Example::
$parser = new ezcMailParser();
$parser->options->mailClass = 'myCustomMailClass'; // extends ezcMail
$parser->parseMail( $set );
Using a custom file class
-------------------------
When parsing a mail, an object of class ezcMailFile is created by default for
each file attachment. You can change this by specifying a custom file class to
the parser before parsing. The custom file class must extend ezcMailFile.
Example::
$parser = new ezcMailParser();
$parser->options->fileClass = 'myCustomFileClass'; // extends ezcMailFile
$parser->parseMail( $set );
Troubleshooting
===============
MTA: Qmail
----------
Qmail insists on only using "\\n" line breaks and will send garbled messages
with the default "\\r\\n" setting. To fix this issue, use
ezcMailTools::setLineBreak( "\\n" ) before sending mail.
MTA: Sendmail relaying denied
-----------------------------
This can happen when the SMTP server you try to use has disabled
the sending of mail from computers not connected to its network, or
if it requires authentication. Talk to the administrator of the SMTP server to
see what the requirements are to send mail.
Check also that sendmail is installed and configured correctly.
For Windows, you need to specify a valid SMTP server in php.ini, or you can
download a "fake" sendmail from the internet.
IMAP: Authentication failed
---------------------------
Sometimes the IMAP transport fails to authenticate, in which case the
authenticate() method will return false. The application should detect when
this occurs and attempt authentication again (for example, for a preset
number of times such as three).
IMAP: Could not read from the stream
------------------------------------
While using the IMAP methods, it is possible that an ezcMailTransportException
is thrown, in which case the connection to the IMAP server is closed. The
application should catch this exception and decide how to handle this
situation (show an error, reconnect).
Parsing: iconv() notices
------------------------
If the mail that you try to parse is not encoded properly, the `iconv`_ ()
function will throw notices (from the function convertToUTF8Iconv() in
ezcMailCharsetConverter).
To avoid the notices you can use your own conversion function:
1. Create a new function which is similar to convertToUTF8Iconv() from
ezcMailCharsetConverter, but which supresses notices and errors (with @ in
front of `iconv`_ ()): ::
class myConverter
{
public static function convertToUTF8IconvNoNotices( $text, $originalCharset )
{
if ( $originalCharset === 'unknown-8bit' || $originalCharset === 'x-user-defined' )
{
$originalCharset = "latin1";
}
return @iconv( $originalCharset, 'utf-8', $text );
}
}
2. Use the created function instead of the normal one (set this before parsing
mail): ::
ezcMailCharsetConverter::setConvertMethod( array( 'myConverter', 'convertToUTF8IconvNoNotices' ) );
Parsing: missing characters
---------------------------
If the mail that you try to parse is not encoded properly, the `iconv`_ ()
function will throw notices (from the function convertToUTF8Iconv() in
ezcMailCharsetConverter).
To avoid the missing characters you can use your own conversion function:
1. Create a new function which is similar to convertToUTF8Iconv() from
ezcMailCharsetConverter, but which uses one of the options //IGNORE or
//TRANSLIT for `iconv`_ (): ::
class myConverter
{
public static function convertToUTF8IconvIgnore( $text, $originalCharset )
{
if ( $originalCharset === 'unknown-8bit' || $originalCharset === 'x-user-defined' )
{
$originalCharset = "latin1";
}
return iconv( $originalCharset, 'utf-8//TRANSLIT', $text );
}
}
2. Use the created function instead of the normal one (set this before parsing
mail): ::
ezcMailCharsetConverter::setConvertMethod( array( 'myConverter', 'convertToUTF8IconvIgnore' ) );
See the other examples in ezcMailCharsetConverter, and see also the
documentation for the `iconv`_ () function to find out how //IGNORE and
//TRANSLIT work.
Parsing: broken headers
-----------------------
If the mail contains headers with broken text (eg. 8-bit characters with no
character set specified), then the parsed header will contain broken text or
missing characters.
For example, when parsing a mail with this header::
Subject: Un Fax a été émis
Then $mail->subject will contain 'Un Fax a t mis' (because the 8-bit characters
could not be parsed correctly by ezcMailTools::mimeDecode() due to the
missing character set).
In order to be able to get the correct value of the header, use
$mail->getHeader( 'Subject' ), which is the raw value of the header
(MIME-encoded). Other headers are available as raw through the getHeader()
function.
The raw headers (obtained via the function getHeader of ezcMailPart) are
MIME-encoded for non-broken headers (eg. '=?iso-8859-1?Q?=E6=F8=E5?='), so if
you want to decode them use ezcMailTools::mimeDecode() or implement your own
MIME-decoding function.
Parsing: multiple-value headers
-------------------------------
Mail headers such as **Received** can appear multiple times in a mail message.
By default the mail parser will only recognize the first value of the header
it encounters, and will disregard the others.
To retrieve all the values of a header from a mail in an array, use the second
argument for the function $mail->getHeader() with the value *true*.
Example::
$mail->getHeader( 'Received', true );
This will return an array which looks like this::
array(
"from punisher.example.com (punisher.example.com...",
"from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])...",
"from punisher.example.com ([127.0.0.1])...",
"from www.example.com (unknown [216.198.224.130]) by...",
"from localhost (localhost) by www.example.com..."
);
instead of only the first value as a string if the second parameter to
getHeader() was not specified.
Parsing: text attachments as file parts
---------------------------------------
By default, the mail parser creates ezcMailTextPart objects for text
attachments found in the mail.
To create ezcMailFile objects instead (for example on servers where
internal memory is limited), set this option to the mail parser before
parsing::
$parser = new ezcMailParser();
$parser->options->parseTextAttachmentsAsFiles = true;
// call $parser->parseMail( $set );
Parsing: attachment file names
------------------------------
When parsing a mail with attachments you can use a code similar to the one in
section _`Parsing a message set`. The mail part that contains the attachment
($part) has the *fileName* property which contains the raw file name,
*contentDisposition->displayFileName* which contain the MIME-decoded file name.
Use the *contentDisposition->displayFileName* value to copy the temporary files
saved during parsing which contain the attachments, and which will not be
available on the next request.
.. _iconv: http://php.net/manual/en/function.iconv.php
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